Fumbling through February

Some days (or nights) you just feel like an idiot. There's no rhyme or reason and there's just no stopping it. I suspect that it's a result of wanting to do so many things and being unable to cover it all. The last week or so has flown by. Everything seems to be moving very quickly. I've done alright on some of my new year's resolutions but others have fallen behind. Clearly, I'm blogging enough and I've been exercising and/or skateboarding fairly frequently. I haven't extracted samples from my music library since around the second week of school though and I haven't made any progress on HTDP or really any code.

Moreover, I'd like to participate in the Summer of Code if at all possible and really want to work my way all the way through Real World Haskell and The C Programming Language in the near future. The latter things will have to wait for academics and essentials. I just hate not being able to do it all. I think I have the time, I'm just not dedicated enough. I'm not sure.

That said, things have been going pretty well in 2009. Even better than 2008 which was mostly good to me aside from some work troubles and restlessness towards the end. Things with Teresa are outstanding, I'm at least partly enjoying school, I'm dealing with financial aid and I've got friends and hobbies on the weekend. I'm doing well in my classes and need to get back to that for now. There's work left to do.

Aside from work there are two interesting things in the next two days. Tomorrow, a Killzone 2 demo is launching on the European PSN. It should prove interesting as a technology showcase. I remember reading a cool paper about it but I can't remember where I found it. Aha. Google found it for me but be warned it's a PDF. So here's a quick primer on the Deferred Rendering techniques they used if you're interested

Alien Workshop is releasing Mind Field on Friday and I'm quite looking forward to seeing that. They've got a hell of a team these days and Heath Kirchart has the ender. I always liked Kirchart. While we're on a skateboarding note I should mention "The Berrics". The Berrics is a combination of the first names of Steve Berra and Eric Koston, close friends and prominent pro skaters who co-own this private skatepark. They've decided to hold a rather far-ranging Game of Skate and I might as well get in on the action and post my foolish bracket before things get further along:

Marc Johnson will beat Berra, sorry Steve. I saw footy that showed Erik Ellington beat Jimmy Cao which wraps up the second round. For the quarterfinals, Benny Fairfax will take out Erik Ellington, Marc Johnson will take out Billy Marks, Mike Mo Capaldi will take out Mike Carroll and in an upset PJ Ladd will take out Eric Koston. For the semis, Marc Johnson will take out Mike Mo (this is actually probably an upset) and Benny Fairfax will take out PJ Ladd (this is definitely an upset). Finally Marc Johnson will take the crown.